Christian Hypocrisy in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s “Die Judenbuche”

A portrait of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1837). I wrote the following in the Fall of 2014 for a course at Brigham Young University on Deutsche Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Introduction The specter of anti-Semitism in German history looms large in today’s post-Holocaust world. The great past works of German literature, ranging from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise … Read more

On the Grotesque Humor of Goethe’s “Der Totentanz”

Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1787) by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein. [This paper was written for the seminar on Goethe that I’m taking this semester.] Introduction and Summary Few of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poems have received such sparse and often perfunctory commentary as his 1813 ballad “Der Totentanz.” Most scholars offering critical notations in collections … Read more

The Use of Irony in Arthur Schnitzler’s “Lieutenant Gustl”

Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931) [This paper was written for one of my classes on Fin de siècle Viennese literature.] Introduction Readers of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1901 novella Lieutenant Gustl may, upon first encountering the text, feel somewhat overwhelmed by a seemingly chaotic literary structure filled with run-on and disjointed sentences, frequent breaks, and short focus. Notwithstanding this seemingly … Read more